Eyes In Your Heart
by angel-death-dealer
Summary: Enchanted...Robert has to deal with nightmares and monsters when Morgan's mother leaves.


**Eyes in your Heart**

In the middle of the night, Robert awoke. He wasn't sure what had woken him up; he was only aware of a silence, followed by a shuffling by his door, and then the tiny padding of feet by the side of his bed. For the moment, he was still tangled in his bedclothes, but he untangled himself enough to be able to move. Tossing and turning for half the night was becoming too much of a routine for him, one he wasn't sure his sanity could handle for much longer.

"Daddy?"

"Wha-?" he murmered, struggling to render himself properly awake.

"Daddy."

The second voice came from a shaky whisper; only it wasn't just any whisper. It was Morgan's; the child-like whisper that wasn't actually quiet, but rather was just intended to sound like a whisper.

Robert opened his eyes this time, raising his head from the pillow which was a lot more crooked then it was when he had first lay his head down. Morgan was standing by the side of his bed, her princess doll in one hand, and the other rubbing at one of her eyes. The three-year-old sounded as if she were still half asleep.

"Morgan?" he asked, sitting up as he tried even harder to wake himself up. As he moved, he caught sight of his watch on the bedside table, showing him that it was only fourty-two minutes past one in the morning. "It's the middle of the night, sweetheart, what are you doing out of bed?"

"Had a dream," she explained, playing with the bottom hemline of her pyjama top now that she had stopped rubbing her eye. "It was scary."

He always thought that he had no sure way of knowing how to comfort children. Mind you, three years ago there had been a lot of things that he didn't know how to deal with when it came to children, this being one of them. He had come to realise, though, as his daughter grew up, that it was best to act off of intuition. She had come to him in the middle of the night because she was scared, and he had to do something about that. Now that he was more awake, he noticed that there were still tears on her face, starting to dry on her tiny cheeks. He frowned at the sight. "Are you still scared?" he asked her.

Morgan simply nodded, and there was a brief silence where neither of them moved or spoke. Robert tried to figure out what to do. Should he send her back to bed, telling her that it was just a dream and that there was nothing to be scared of? Or should he stay up with her, making her feel better until she went back to sleep even though he had a very early meeting with a client the next morning. After a short moment, he decided upon the latter and pulled back the duvet cover, inviting her onto the mattress beside him.

"Come on, honey," he said, waiting until she had curled up on the bed beside him, clutching at her doll whilst she got as close to him as she could, until he spoke again. "What was your bad dream about?"

She looked up at him with those large blue eyes. Her mother, Sarah's, eyes. Eyes that were captivating and honest. He'd wondered once whether he'd ever see the same colour as he had done in her eyes in any other worldy wonder, and he found it rather ironic that one day, he had done, only in his daughter's eyes rather than Sarah's. "Monsters," she said simply. "Monsters and Mommy."

"There's no such thing as monsters," he said on impulse, as he had overheard Sarah saying everytime she dealt with a bad dream, only remembering that they lived in modern New York City proved otherwise.

"But there is such thing as Mommy," she told him in a quiet tone.

"Yes, but your mother isn't a monster."

Morgan looked up at him, with a strange expression on her face. "I heard Grandpa say that she was 'cause she left me behind."

"He didn't mean it like that," he covered up, before she forever remembered her mother with purple horns and a forked tail.

"Was he _lying_?" she asked, still in that idyllic age where anything a grown up told you was the truth, completely oblivious to the fact that her father was a lawyer.

"No, he wasn't lying," Robert told her, "he was just wrong. He said it because that's what she reminds him of, and if she did something bad like leaving a pretty girl like you behind, then she'd remind him of monsters."

"And if she did something nice, she'd remind him of something nice?" she slowly realised.

He nodded. "That's right, but just because she makes Grandpa think of monsters it doesn't mean that monsters are real," he covered, remembering the purpose of her staying in his bed.

"So, there's no monsters under your bed too?" she asked him warily.

"There's no monsters under my bed," he assured her.

"Promise?"

He nodded firmly, or as firmly as he could for such a late hour. "I promise."

"What if you can't see them?" she tested him. "What if they turn invisible or they're hiding?"

"Nothing can turn invisible," he told her, "and they're not hiding because most thing you can see, but there are a few things you can't. But monsters aren't real anyway, and even if they _were_, which they're _not_, you'd be able to see them."

Morgan looked confused, but it wasn't because of his explanation. "Why can't you see some things?" she asked him.

"Umm..." he had been caught out there. "Some things you just can't see, not with your eyes."

"What else is there?" she asked him. "I've only got my eyes to see with."

"Some things you see with your eyes," he told her, "but other things you can only see with your heart."

Morgan scrunched up her face. "I don't get it," she told him. "Has your heart got eyes?"

"No, it just sees things in it's own special way," he told her. "Like your mother, you love her, right?"

"Yes," she said softly. He tried not to detest that thought, seeing as Sarah had left her daughter behind because she just 'wasn't cut out for this life'.

"That's something everyone else can see with their eyes, but when _you _see it, you see it with your heart," he explained to her, shocked at how much sense he was making for almost two in the morning.

"Why?"

"Because love is a very special thing," he told her. "People can see when you love someone, and they can see how much you love them but when _you_ know that you love them, no one else can see it like you can."

Morgan sighed. "I still don't get it," she told him.

"You will one day," he assured her. "When you're older."

"I _am_ older," she insisted. "I'm three now, I'm a big girl."

"A _bigger_ girl, then," he told her. "No, come on, it's late, you should go back to sleep."

Not arguing, Morgan curled up against him, her little head resting against his chest. The sound of his heartbeat close to her ear comforted her, lulling her back towards the sleep which had been so rudely interrupted by the monsters.

"Daddy," she whispered, so close to sleep now.

"Yes, baby?"

"You feel like home," she told him softly.

Instinctively, his arm fell around her, keeping her in place against him. His lips briefly touched the top of her head, and he whispered back to her, the last words she heard before she fell back into sleep. "So do you, Morgan."


End file.
